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Most scams, such as sub-prime mortgages and email scams, victimize adults. But custody scams victimize children. When government fails to protect children it throws open the doors to private contractors—lawyers and clinicians—who enrich themselves at the expense of children. (More about this child and the mother who tried to protect her appears below.)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

16 year old uses the EAA to demand justice against his father

TEEN MAKES VIDEO PLEA TO D.A. URGING PROSECUTION OF HIS ABUSERDamon Asks for Protective Order for his 16th Birthday

Monterey, CA Damon, a boy in hiding, has made a video requesting the Monterey County D.A. prosecute his sexually abusive father and grant him a Protective Order for his 16th birthday, so he will finally be safe and can return home. His video can be viewed at: Safe Kids International.

"It's been 10 years since I first reported that my father was sexually abusing me and the family court is still making me go back with him," said Damon, a victim of sexual abuse who is currently living in hiding to escape the abuse. "I'm using social media to spread the word and let everyone know what's happening. I'm hoping Monterey County DA, Dean Flippo, will give me a protective order for my birthday so that I'm able to go back to my home. I really miss my family and friends."

Although Damon is from San Diego, he asserts that the San Diego District Attorney and Family Court judges have failed to do a proper investigation, have swept his abuse under the rug, and forced him to live with his father. Damon says that the court and his father have threatened to send him to a lock-down behavioral modification center to be coerced into recanting the abuse. So Damon ran away and went into hiding a year ago to protect himself. That is why, although Damon is from San Diego, he wants the case to be heard in Monterey County, where the abuse first occurred at his grandmother’s house.

Along with social media, Damon has used a novel idea, the Evidentiary Abuse Affidavit (EAA). Born out of the Drew and Stacey Peterson case (currently at trial), the EAA was created by violence expert Susan Murphy Milano to insure that the victim’s accounts of assaults would not disappear if she did. It combines videotaping of the victim’s words attesting to the abuse coupled with creative witnessed and notarized legal documents that successfully satisfy legal hurdles often faced in these cases. Damon says he wants his EAA to be used in case he is sent to a lock-down facility, disappears, or is murdered. The EAA is a newly released iPad app making it easy for other teens in Damon’s situation to use.

Former FBI director, Louis Freeh, when describing the Penn State cover up, said, “I want to remind everyone here, and those watching this press conference, of the need to report child sexual abuse to the authorities.” Damon has asked the public in his video to report his abuse to the D.A.

Barry Nolan of the Boston Daily wrote, “In the Wake of Jerry Sandusky”, in which he observes that one of the recurring themes of the victims’ testimony was “Who would believe a kid?” He uses Damon’s case as an example of how sexual abuse reports are not taken seriously or investigated properly in family courts. Nolan says, “If enough of them come forward and enough of us start to listen, maybe one day one day when the question is asked — who would believe a kid? — the answer will be different.” Damon is hoping the answer will be different for him.

About the mother and child pictured at the top

On February 21, 1992, Rhode Island Family Court's Chief Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah gave this two-year-old to the sole custody and possession of her father despite his history of domestic violence and failure to pay child support. The father, a police officer, brought false charges against his ex-wife, first saying she was a drug addict. (Twenty-two random tests proved she was not.) Then he had her arrested for bank fraud, then for filing a false report, then for sexual abuse, then for kidnapping. None of his charges stuck.

The child remained with her father and stepmother until 2003, when, at 14, she finally realized that her mother had not been a drug addict. The teenager persuaded Judge Stephen Capineri to let her return to her mother. There she began working on the painful issues of lifelong coercion and deception--a tangled knot of guilt and rage. Most painful has been her father’s continuing refusal to let her visit two dearly loved half-sisters, whom she has not seen since 2003.

She is one of countless children in Rhode Island subjected to severe emotional and physical trauma by Family Court when it helps abusive parents to maintain control over their families after divorce. When she turned 18 in 2007, she gave the Parenting Project permission to publish her picture on behalf of all children who have been held hostage by Rhode Island custody scams.

We are using this blog to provide links to stories that will help concerned people, including government officials, become aware of this form of child abuse and legal abuse. We must work together to improve the courts' ability to recognize the signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in victims of domestic abuse who are trying to protect their children.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are looking for the story of the removal of "Molly and Sara," please visit http://LittleHostages.blogspot.com

More Parenting Project Blogs

About the Author and the Cause

Parenting Project is a volunteer community service begun in 1996 at Mathewson Street United Methodist Church, Providence, RI, to focus on the needs of children at risk in Family Court custody cases. Our goal is to make Rhode Island's child protective system more effective, transparent, and accountable.

The Parenting Project coordinator, Anne Grant, a retired minister and former executive director of Rhode Island's largest shelter for battered women and their children, researches and writes about official actions that endanger children and the parents who try to protect them. She wrote a chapter on Rhode Island in Domestic Violence, Abuse, and Child Custody: Legal Strategies and Policy Issues, ed. Mo Therese Hannah, PhD, and Barry Goldstein, JD (Civic Research Institute, 2010).

Comments and corrections on anything written here may be sent in an email with no attachments to parentingproject@verizon.net

Find out more about the crisis in custody courts here:

www.centerforjudicialexcellence.org/PhotoExhibit.htm

www.child-justice.org

www.leadershipcouncil.org

www.evawintl.orgprovides forensic resources to end violence against women